


God on the Phone

by Sophia_Bee



Series: X-men Canon Compliant Fics [6]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom
Genre: Angry Erik, Angst, Canon Compliant, Drug Use, Graphic Description, Holocaust, M/M, Past Torture, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 02:06:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2564291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophia_Bee/pseuds/Sophia_Bee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the plane to Paris, Charles asks Erik if he believes in God.</p>
            </blockquote>





	God on the Phone

**Author's Note:**

> A discussion between Erik and Charles. Canon compliant, one shot, Erik POV, dark. Inspired by thinking about what might it take for Erik to turn away from his religion.
> 
> Translation 中文 to available thanks to zandrov :[God on the Phone](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3129281)

“Do you believe in God, Erik?”

Charles says Erik’s name contempt, emphasizing the sharp sound at the end. His eyes are angry and red-rimmed as he glares at him across the chessboard that sits between them. Erik looks at Charles, contemplating how he should answer this question, and the scotch he’s been drinking buzzes through his veins. Why this question. Why now. Then he speaks, his voice slow and measured.

“There is no god, Charles. There is only me and you.” Erik says tiredly as he picks up a pawn and moves it a space forward. “Do YOU believe in god?”

Charles is slouched in the seat across from him as the plane speeds through the darkness, taking them all to save the world, to stop Mystique, to save not just mutant-kind but all of humanity, and this burns Erik. Some don’t deserve to be saved, yet they will all benefit, because after all these years and all they’ve been through, Charles still can’t pick and choose. Charles still doesn’t feel comfortable playing God. Erik embraces it. It’s the role he’s been given although he had never actually wanted it.

“I went to church when I was a child,” Charles says, holding one of his knights in his fingers, hovering above the chess board, not looking at Erik. “Anglican, hymns, sitting for an hour on hard wooden pews, the incense itching my nose. Sit, kneel, sit again. It was dreadful.”

Charles huffs out a small laugh, caught up in the memory and his eyes are far away. Erik misses his laugh. More than he'd realized and His chest tightens as the pain he thought had finally left him returns. He pictures Charles as a child sitting in a church pew, wearing a suit that’s too big, rubbing his nose as he attempts not to fidget. It’s a image a million lifetimes from the man who sits across from him now, unkempt, sinewy arms with track marks around the inside of the pale skin of his inner elbow, hands with swollen knuckles and a slight tremor, that knight still hovering over the chessboard.

“And now, Erik, I don’t know what I believe. I really don’t know. But I know that part of me wants to believe there’s a God, because I want to think that someone, something, will hold you responsible for all that you’ve done.”

The anger is back and the knight slams down on the board. Erik flinches. Fuck you, Charles.

“No one will hold me accountable, Charles,” Erik says smoothly, keeping his voice controlled and his eyes never leave Charles face despite the accusation that lies there. “Least of all, you. It’s not your job. It’s not god’s job. In the end I will answer to no one for my perceived transgressions, but people will live because of them. No one has lived because of yours.”

Angel. Emma. Azazel. Their ghosts never leave him, along with the knowledge that he has failed them. He and Charles. Their deaths are the only thing they have left to share between them.

Charles transgressions are not slight. Erik’s eyes go to where Charles has pushed up his shirt sleeves and Charles glances down then pushes them down to cover the tracks. His eyes return to Erik’s, and there’s something there, pleading for him to understand that sometimes the only thing that counts is being able to numb everything. Erik doesn’t understand and he will not give this to Charles. All his life he has leaned into the pain. He did not run away but Charles did.

“Do you believe in anything, Erik?” Charles asks, “Anything other than your self-appointed role as the messiah of mutant-kind? Is there any sort of faith left?”

Erik’s mouth twists. I believed in you. He doesn’t say this.

He hasn’t always lacked faith. While it might have been easy to walk away from a god who let people be loaded into cattle cars and sent to the slaughter, to turn his back on an entity who allowed his father to be dragged away from him, gone forever, Erik never did. None of that was enough for him to turn his back on god.

After liberation, while he was living in the displaced persons camps, before he ended up on the streets of Eastern Europe, Erik tried to find his father. He talked to aid workers and scanned lists of names. He talked to people who were willing to talk, the ones who had ghosts in their eyes and who couldn't stop shaking. He tried to find out what had happened. Was he gassed? Shot? Did he collapse one day underneath the intolerable weight of rocks carried out of a mine. Did he starve? Was he burned or was he buried, shoved in with other stinking putrid corpses, rotting evidence of atrocities to human beings for reasons that the world would declare unfathomable yet would never stop doing. Never again was a lie.

At least he knew how his mother died. That was a strange gift from Schmidt.

When his mother was shot, her skull exploding into fragments of bone, skin, hair, her blood covering the men standing behind her, the last thing Erik saw on her lips, just after she did her best to reassure her son that everything would be okay, was a prayer. Even when faced with how depraved humanity could be in the form of Schmidt, one of the humans that her god had created, his mother still reached out. She still believed. So Erik still believed, finding ways to observe Shabbot when he happened to find out it was the sabbath by overhearing the guards talking. He never knew what day it was in the camp. Most often his observation was just closing his eyes and remembering lighting the candles with his mother, trying to forget that he was slumped against the concrete of his cell, his limbs aching from the cold that seeped into his bones. He would recite prayers, look to god, ask him to give all of this pain and horror meaning.

And god did.

As Schmidt created more pain, more anger, Erik grew more powerful and the reason he survived, the torture he had to endure, made sense. It was part of the plan. It had to make sense, otherwise he may not be able to go on.

It had taken something entirely different to destroy his faith. It had taken Charles.

“I believe in myself.” Eriks says quietly, holding Charles' gaze, refusing to look away. It’s the truth. In the end, no one will help him. In the end no one is spared. Not even the man he loved.

Erik can take a lot of pain. Schmidt proved that. The scars across his body are evidence. Burns, incisions, all symbols of the torture he's endured. He lost his parents. He lost his people, to crematoriums, gas, bullets. He lost his home, his childhood and almost his life. And none of that truly broke him. It was Charles who broke him. Charles who cracked him open bit by bit and let light inside until Erik felt that sometimes he almost glowed with how much he loved him.

He still loves him.

God help him.

Ironic that Erik thinks he has the right to ask this when he does not believe.

Charles gave him what had been stolen from him countless times by countless people: joy. Charles left him wide open and vulnerable.

Now Charles is radiating anger and betrayal to the point that even without his telepathy, Erik can feel the condemnation. He longs to reach out and touch him, to feel him one more time, and maybe that would be enough. Erik is practically vibrating with effort as he keeps his hands on the armrests of the seat.

It will never be enough.

It was Charles who destroyed his last bit of faith, lying on the sand in Cuba, a bullet in his back. If there was a god, Charles would not have been taken from him. Charles would be walking. God would have known that of all the things that Erik needed in this world, the most important was Charles by his side, intact and whole. Instead the bullet fired from Moira’s gun, and as Erik deflected it, it didn’t bury in a tree or rip through the remains of the Blackbird, or fall into the sand. It tore into Charles' spine, shattering bone and severing his spinal cord, and in that moment Erik let go of believing in anything at all.

God laughed.

Does he believe in god? The question still lingers the way cheap perfume lingers, or the smell of dirt after a rainstorm, or the stench of burning bodies.

He had prayed on those days and weeks after Cuba. Foolish prayers muttered under his breath out of habit, and Mystique had kept everyone away from him, unsure of what Erik would do, tiptoeing around him carefully. She had told Erik he was scaring her and this wasn't what she'd signed up for. She put her hand in his shoulder and told him she couldn't sleep at night either. Erik's eyes shone with tears as he looked up at her from the sagging bed of the cheap motel they had fled to, and he knows they have bothist too much. It was the closest he came to crying.

If Erik was a believer maybe he could accept that his role in life was not to love Charles Xavier but to be the liberator of mutant-kind, and Charles in a wheelchair, Charles angry, Charles addicted and craving, is all part of the plan. Just like his father in the crematorium. Just like his mother’s brains splattering across the room. Just like myriad of ways Schmidt had made him scream as he unlocked his powers. The problem is that Erik actually loves Charles more than himself, more he loves any god, and will never accept a god that tells him that love and joy is what must be killed for any cause.

He cannot have Charles. If god is going to ask him to make that choice, he will turn his back on god.

Does he believe in god?

No.

Not anymore.

~fin~


End file.
